When you’re first diagnosed with coeliac disease, as well as digesting the fact your diet has to change FOR EVER, the specialist also hits you with a lovely list of things you’re more at risk of, like:
Osteoporosis
Sure enough, I don’t have a brilliant bone density and, after a bone scan last year (Dem bones, dem bones), I’ve been advised to eat more cheese. Well, if you insist, doctor…
Anaemia
If you’re not sticking to a GF diet, you are not absorbing all sorts of goodies, such as iron. My levels were low when I was diagnosed.
Stomach cancers
Don’t panic, it’s a very low risk.
And…
Fertility issues
Kids were the last thing on my mind when I was diagnosed. I was in my mid-20s, busy, wild and poor in London, with a new-ish boyfriend. We were not planning for a family, we were mostly planning for the weekend.
But fast forward a few years and we’d relocated north, swapped our Oyster Cards for a Vauxhall Corsa and were discussing the pros and cons of boiler insurance over tuna nicoise salad. The baby thing started to niggle.
The biological clock can scream loud enough for women even without the coeliac fertility fear buzzing in the background. You hear so many stories of women struggling to get pregnant – and I was more exposed than most, working in features for various newspapers. Added to this, I was convinced I’d pickled my ovaries with Sailor Jerry’s over the years.
Luckily, neither the rum nor the battered intestines were an issue and my son arrived when I was in my early 30s with surprisingly little effort. It still shocks me as I had convinced myself my body was a rundown wreck.
Friends who are coeliac also have kids and got pregnant after a year or so of trying – certainly within the NHS guidelines for their age. Also, if the contraceptive pill is not being absorbed properly pre-diagnosis, do some surprise babies arrive?
But I can imagine it is soul destroying if you are struggling to get pregnant and you don’t know whether it is down to coeliac disease or something completely unconnected. Hopefully, if that is the case, you can chat to a sympathetic doctor and it will happen for you eventually.
Seriously, who’d be a coeliac woman?
By Kay Harrison – coeliac mum of 1 (still surviving on rum)